Brazil aims to clone endangered animals

November 14, 2012

Conservationists in Brazil are poised to try cloning eight animals that are under pressure, including jaguars and maned wolves, New Scientist reports.

None of the targeted animals are critically endangered, but Brazil’s agricultural research agency, Embrapa, wants a headstart. Working with the Brasilia Zoological Garden, it has collected around 420 tissue samples, mostly from carcasses.

There are no plans to release cloned animals into the wild, says Embrapa’s Carlos Frederico Martins. Being clones, they would lack the genetic variability of wild populations.

“The key is foresight, to just save a little piece of skin, blood or other living cells before the genes from these individuals are lost from the planet forever.

A freezer the size of a standard refrigerator could store the genetics for all the pandas in China, or all the mountain gorillas in Africa,” says Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology in Marlborough, Massachusetts, who headed the group that produced the gaur. “If you have the genetic material you can produce sperm, for instance, and reintroduce genetic diversity whenever you want.”

Rhiannon Lloyd of the University of Portsmouth, UK, runs a facility that stores DNA of threatened and extinct species. She backs Embrapa’s plan: “Collecting from dead specimens prevents the valuable information within their cells being lost forever.”

Comments (9)

Doesn’t seem feasible. Cloned animals always seem to be inferior in every way to their master source gene pool. Like what Alliwant said above. I have to agree. Even cloned plants are inferior to their Mother Nature created parents.

I wonder if this program will do any more than buy a little time. Clones often seem to suffer diminished vitality, so this may be no better than a short term program. Then again, maybe they will find ways to keep cloned lines vital.

Brazil is certainly the place to start saving the genes of wildlife. Have you seen how terrible the devastation is? The deforestation there is vast. People keep cutting down rain forest for cattle ranches that soon loose the fertility of the thin soil, and so the ranchers move on and cut down more trees. After the Sing, these barren abandoned ranches will slowly return to the wilds.

Rain forest is very different from the Cerrado, where those species are from.
You’re still right when pointing out the devastation however since, proportionally, the situation may be even worse; but not in the conclusion drawn since many other countries witnessed such a process from much much earlier.
The articles mention China’s pandas and Africa’s Gorillas, but I could easily add Indonesia and Sumatra’s tigers, again China’s and Africa’s elephants, North America (USA mostly)’s Bison (although the original article do mention this one, this is inconsistent with the “all from cerrado” statement).
It is hypocritical to denounce developing countries for following the footsteps of the industrial revolution.

It is hypocritical to denounce developing countries for following the footsteps of the industrial revolution

Nonsense. The difference between what occurred during the industrial revolution and what is happening in Brazil and elsewhere today is that during the industrial revolution the deforestation was at least controlled. Today, we have a massive parks system in the US, including Yellowstone, etc. Add to this the fact that back then we lacked an understanding of the fragility of life and the need to preserve it, and excuse Brazil doesn’t have today.